Continuation Part 11: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[Numbers]

Regarding statements by the Perugian police on Nov. 6, 2007, and on possibly other times; from Guide on Article 6:

220. The presumption of innocence may be infringed not only by a judge or court but also by other public authorities (Allenet de Ribemont v. France, § 36; Daktaras v. Lithuania, § 42; Petyo Petkov v. Bulgaria, § 91). Article 6 § 2 prohibits statements by public officials about pending criminal investigations which encourage the public to believe the suspect guilty and prejudge the assessment of the facts by the competent judicial authority (Ismoilov and Others v. Russia, § 161; Butkevicius v. Lithuania, § 53).

 

[Numbers]

In consideration of the fast-track trial of Rudy Guede and its appeal trial, and the statements made in the trials or written in the motivations from those trials, that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito were co-conspirators with Guede in the murder and rape of Meredith Kercher; from Guide on Article 6:

217. The presumption of innocence will be violated if a judicial decision concerning a person charged with a criminal offence reflects an opinion that he is guilty before he has been proved guilty according to law. It suffices, even in the absence of any formal finding, that there is some reasoning suggesting that the court regards the accused as guilty (see, as the leading authority, Minelli v. Switzerland, § 37; and, more recently, Nerattini v. Greece, § 23; Didu v. Romania, § 41). A premature expression of such an opinion by the tribunal itself will inevitably fall foul of this presumption (Nešťák v. Slovakia, § 88; Garycki v. Poland, § 66).

218. What is important in the application of the provision of Article 6 § 2 is the true meaning of the statements in question, not their literal form (Lavents v. Latvia, § 126).

219. The fact that the applicant was ultimately found guilty cannot vacate his initial right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law (see Matijašević v. Serbia, § 49; Nešťák v. Slovakia, § 90, concerning decisions prolonging the applicants’ detention on remand).

CASE OF MINELLI v. SWITZERLAND 8660/79 25/03/1983 {excerpt}

37. In the Court’s judgment, the presumption of innocence will be violated if, without the accused’s having previously been proved guilty according to law and, notably, without his having had the opportunity of exercising his rights of defence, a judicial decision concerning him reflects an opinion that he is guilty. This may be so even in the absence of any formal finding; it suffices that there is some reasoning suggesting that the court regards the accused as guilty.

 

[MichaelB]

delete

 

[Planigale]

I don't know what you mean by "contemporaneous notes". Investigation activity byt police forces is supposed to produce what Italian law calls verbali of police activity. A verbale (minutes) is usually supposed to be a summary written by the police. It should not be a direct recording of what the person says.
It is also supposed to be used for the investigation, but not to enter the trial.
The cost of 5-10 euros per minute (this is the price of audio transcripts on the market) would make the police activity rise to rather astronomical costs, if you consider that 1 hour would be 300 euros at least and a police station may well perform tens of hours of questionings every day all the time. Not to speak about the catastrophic delay of hearing sessions: the asking for a transcription is the favourite tool used by Italian lawyers to obtain delays of hearing sessions. And every hearing delay means a delay of months of the whole trial in Italy.
You must understand, btw, that those "contemporaneous notes" are for investigation only. They are prohibited at the trial. In fact, judges are not allowed to read police notes, and also they are not allowed to hear or read recordings of declarations of suspects.
This evidence is inadmissible. (art. 541 § 2) The Judge cannot read or listen recordings from police questionings.
The rule is these materials are not admissible in trials under Italian law. If - paradoxically - a recording of Knox's interrogation or Knox's spontaneous statement existed, and if the prosecution wanted to bring it as proof, the Court would refuse to hear it. So all this money would be wasted.

So Recording or contemporaneous verbatim recording of interviews with suspects is not done in Italy.

Were recordings or contemporaneous verbatim notes taken of the interview with Knox?

If not this is an indication they were being treated as suspects.

Clearly this has significant issues - the official record of an interview of a suspect is a non contemporaneous interpretation by a police officer based on the police officer's memory (and discussion with other officers?) of what was said. Even more so when this is in a foreign language with all the grammatical subtleties that Mach has informed us of.

 

[Samson]

Anna Donnino in her testimony in court stated that she acted as a "mediator". She talked to Amanda about Donnino's own personal experiences with injury, pain, and memory. That was not part of being a fair interpreter. The Convention calls for a fair interpreter, not for a "mediator".

I wonder about translation and idiomatic language. There are children yet unborn who may find academic opportunities in this fascinating case.

 

[anglolawyer]

Buratti does not say Lumumba's phone was bugged before the 5th.

He says Lumumba's pub was bugged. Not to record Lumumba; it was bugged to record Knox (who used to work there). It was an "environmental interception".

How would you know this? Did Mignini tell you this too? My understanding is she was handing out flyers which would mean she was in the bar very little. And I'm not sure, maybe somebody knows, whether she went to work at all after the murder as she was scared to walk around town at night on her own (without a kitchen knife). I bet they bugged his bar as soon as they figured out who sent her the 8.18 text. They added 2 and 2 and made 5: exchange of texts, phones switched off, Meredith arrives home, murder. That's what puts Lumumba in the frame.

Since you have access to these people please ask for:

1 a copy of Matteini's authorisation to invade Raffaele's place
2 a copy of the application (I want the content and the date)
3 date Le Chic was bugged, plus authorisation and application as aforesaid

Then we can judge for ourselves. If you prefer, just give me Mignini's email and I'll ask him myself.

Thanks in advance (as the saying goes).

 

[LondonJohn]

How would you know this? Did Mignini tell you this too? My understanding is she was handing out flyers which would mean she was in the bar very little. And I'm not sure, maybe somebody knows, whether she went to work at all after the murder as she was scared to walk around town at night on her own (without a kitchen knife). I bet they bugged his bar as soon as they figured out who sent her the 8.18 text. They added 2 and 2 and made 5: exchange of texts, phones switched off, Meredith arrives home, murder. That's what puts Lumumba in the frame.

Since you have access to these people please ask for:

1 a copy of Matteini's authorisation to invade Raffaele's place
2 a copy of the application (I want the content and the date)
3 date Le Chic was bugged, plus authorisation and application as aforesaid

Then we can judge for ourselves. If you prefer, just give me Mignini's email and I'll ask him myself.

Thanks in advance (as the saying goes).

One thing that intrigues me significantly is Machiavelli's claimed level of access to many of the main actors in this strange drama, and his claims that they are willing and able to answer his questions and supply him with information.

In my opinion, if this is true, it implies either that a) Machiavelli is a public official of some importance, which would explain why these people are ready and able to share case-sensitive information with him; or b) Machiavelli is just a common-or-garden member of the public (or journalist), in which case one surely has to wonder why public officials are so (apparently) readily doling out case-sensitive information with him.

Of course I'm heavily inclined to think that (b) is the right answer. But I'm then left at a loss. I feel absolutely certain, for example, that if I were to approach senior police officers and prosecutors who were involved in (say) the investigation and prosecution of Vincent Tabak (who murdered Joanna Yeates in Bristol in 2010), they wouldn't be prepared to tell me anything that wasn't already in the public domain - and even then I suspect they'd be very wary indeed of discussing the case with a member of Joe Public. And if they did do so, it would (in my view) seriously compromise their professional integrity and ethical commitment to their position. And that example, in addition, is of a case that is now entirely concluded: the Knox/Sollecito trials are still very much in progress!

I simply can't conceive of why, for example, Mignini would be willing and able to discuss - with a random member of the public - his movements on the night of the 5/6 November interrogations of Knox and Sollecito. If we are indeed talking about a regular, unaccredited member of the public (as I feel very confident that we are), then it speaks very badly in my view to the abject lack of professionalism of people such as Mignini. Mind you, Mignini himself certainly has form in his willingness to discuss this case in plenty of detail with all and sundry. Funny how I don't remember any UK Crown Prosecutors acting in the same way............

 

[anglolawyer]

One thing that intrigues me significantly is Machiavelli's claimed level of access to many of the main actors in this strange drama, and his claims that they are willing and able to answer his questions and supply him with information.

In my opinion, if this is true, it implies either that a) Machiavelli is a public official of some importance, which would explain why these people are ready and able to share case-sensitive information with him; or b) Machiavelli is just a common-or-garden member of the public (or journalist), in which case one surely has to wonder why public officials are so (apparently) readily doling out case-sensitive information with him.

Of course I'm heavily inclined to think that (b) is the right answer. But I'm then left at a loss. I feel absolutely certain, for example, that if I were to approach senior police officers and prosecutors who were involved in (say) the investigation and prosecution of Vincent Tabak (who murdered Joanna Yeates in Bristol in 2010), they wouldn't be prepared to tell me anything that wasn't already in the public domain - and even then I suspect they'd be very wary indeed of discussing the case with a member of Joe Public. And if they did do so, it would (in my view) seriously compromise their professional integrity and ethical commitment to their position. And that example, in addition, is of a case that is now entirely concluded: the Knox/Sollecito trials are still very much in progress!

I simply can't conceive of why, for example, Mignini would be willing and able to discuss - with a random member of the public - his movements on the night of the 5/6 November interrogations of Knox and Sollecito. If we are indeed talking about a regular, unaccredited member of the public (as I feel very confident that we are), then it speaks very badly in my view to the abject lack of professionalism of people such as Mignini. Mind you, Mignini himself certainly has form in his willingness to discuss this case in plenty of detail with all and sundry. Funny how I don't remember any UK Crown Prosecutors acting in the same way............

It is an oddity. IMO Mignini seems to feel a need to be believed and to be vindicated. It's a weakness of his. This is one of the fora (among others) in which knowledgable people sit in judgment on him. From his closing speech in one of the trials I gather he made reference to online discussions and he has gone so far as to prosecute those who have the temerity to publish criticism of the process. So I think Mach has wormed his way into a position of trust and confidence as the most formidable (let's face it, the competition isn't stiff ) and loyal of the pro-guilt commentators and has become a sort of approved outlet, which is useful for us because, without Mach, we would not know of Mignini's embellishment of his 2.00 a.m. claim, that he was in REM sleep when awoken and told of happenings at the questura. This is like Guede claiming to remember and thinking it worth mentioning that Meredith used her keys to unlock the door when they arrived together (no ******). It's the type of embroidery used by liars when they want to be convincing but which (to me) has the opposite effect. It's not only liars, though. Also honest but weak people with a desperate need to be believed behave this way, so it doesn't prove anything either way but it sure is odd.

 

[Samson]

One thing that intrigues me significantly is Machiavelli's claimed level of access to many of the main actors in this strange drama, and his claims that they are willing and able to answer his questions and supply him with information.

In my opinion, if this is true, it implies either that a) Machiavelli is a public official of some importance, which would explain why these people are ready and able to share case-sensitive information with him; or b) Machiavelli is just a common-or-garden member of the public (or journalist), in which case one surely has to wonder why public officials are so (apparently) readily doling out case-sensitive information with him.

Of course I'm heavily inclined to think that (b) is the right answer. But I'm then left at a loss. I feel absolutely certain, for example, that if I were to approach senior police officers and prosecutors who were involved in (say) the investigation and prosecution of Vincent Tabak (who murdered Joanna Yeates in Bristol in 2010), they wouldn't be prepared to tell me anything that wasn't already in the public, domain - and even then I suspect they'd be very wary indeed of discussing the case with a member of Joe Public. And if they did do so, it would (in my view) seriously compromise their professional integrity and ethical commitment to their position. And that example, in addition, is of a case that is now entirely concluded: the Knox/Sollecito trials are still very much in progress!

I simply can't conceive of why, for example, Mignini would be willing and able to discuss - with a random member of the public - his movements on the night of the 5/6 November interrogations of Knox and Sollecito. If we are indeed talking about a regular, unaccredited member of the public (as I feel very confident that we are), then it speaks very badly in my view to the abject lack of professionalism of people such as Mignini. Mind you, Mignini himself certainly has form in his willingness to discuss this case in plenty of detail with all and sundry. Funny how I don't remember any UK Crown Prosecutors acting in the same way............

Have these claims been made recently, as I would have expected to be aware of them?
Or more likely, are these claims in the back catalogues that you have in your mind LJ?
Alternatively am I missing the clues that are obvious that Machiavelli is an insider?

I will make this observation.
I have lost count of the number of times I have considered posts made by myself and others have rendered Machiavelli impotent, painted into a corner, scientifically, semantically, legally, judicially, morally, ethically, yet he continues to thrill the gullible crowds.

Like Houdini.

 

[Numbers]

The Convention right of access to a lawyer at first questioning overrides domestic (State) law. See (summary from the press release):

CASE OF DAYANAN v. TURKEY 7377/03 13/10/2009

13 October 2009
The applicant, who was charged with, and subsequently convicted of, being a Hezbollah member, did not have the assistance of a lawyer while he was in police custody.
The Court held that there had been a violation of Article 6 § 3 (c) taken together with 6 § 1 of the Convention. It found that that restriction (which was systematic, as it was prescribed by the relevant provisions of Turkish law) of the right of an individual deprived of his liberty to have access to a lawyer was sufficient for it to be able to conclude that there had been a violation of Article 6 of the Convention, even though the applicant had remained silent while in police custody.

 

[anglolawyer]

Have these claims been made recently, as I would have expected to be aware of them?
Or more likely, are these claims in the back catalogues that you have in your mind LJ?
Alternatively am I missing the clues that are obvious that Machiavelli is an insider?

I will make this observation.
I have lost count of the number of times I have considered posts made by myself and others have rendered Machiavelli impotent, painted into a corner, scientifically, semantically, legally, judicially, morally, ethically, yet he continues to thrill the gullible crowds.

Like Houdini.

That's an inevitable consequence of the overwhelming likelihood that they are innocent and that Mach, Mignini et al are wrong.

 

[Numbers]

A person questioned as a subterfuge as a witness but actually in custody has the right under the Convention to a lawyer and to remain silent. (Summary from the press release; the judgment is available in French only; if your French language skills are better than mine and you wish to read the original, the heart of the judgment appears in Para. 52-55.)

AFFAIRE BRUSCO c. FRANCE 1466/07 14/10/2010

14 October 2010
The applicant, who was suspected of having masterminded an aggression, was taken into police custody and questioned as a witness, after being made to swear to tell the truth.
The Court held that there had been a violation of Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (right to remain silent and not to incriminate oneself) of the Convention. According to the Court, the applicant was not a mere witness but a person “charged with a criminal offence”, and as such should have had the right to remain silent and not to incriminate himself, guaranteed by Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 of the Convention. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the applicant was not assisted by a lawyer until his 20th hour in police custody. Had a lawyer been present, he would have been able to inform the applicant of his right to remain silent.

 

[Numbers]

A person questioned as a subterfuge as a witness but actually in custody has the right under the Convention to a lawyer and to remain silent. (Summary from the press release; the judgment is available in French only; if your French language skills are better than mine and you wish to read the original, the heart of the judgment appears in Para. 52-55.)

AFFAIRE BRUSCO c. FRANCE 1466/07 14/10/2010

14 October 2010
The applicant, who was suspected of having masterminded an aggression, was taken into police custody and questioned as a witness, after being made to swear to tell the truth.
The Court held that there had been a violation of Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (right to remain silent and not to incriminate oneself) of the Convention. According to the Court, the applicant was not a mere witness but a person “charged with a criminal offence”, and as such should have had the right to remain silent and not to incriminate himself, guaranteed by Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 of the Convention. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the applicant was not assisted by a lawyer until his 20th hour in police custody. Had a lawyer been present, he would have been able to inform the applicant of his right to remain silent.

Google translation of Para. 52-55:

{Translating the google translation:

52. Police custody and swearing an oath - which entails a further risk of prosecution for perjury - were forms of pressure exerted on the subject.

54. [In France,] there are minutes [kept] of the questioning which apparently show no evidence that the subject was informed of his right to remain silent or of his right to counsel at the beginning of questioning. The subject only had legal counsel after 20 hours in custody.

55. The dismisses the objections of the Government. There has been a violation of the guarantees of Articles 6.1 and 6.3.}

52. The Court considers that having been sworn before filing constituted for the applicant - who was already since yesterday the subject of an enforcement action, police custody - a form of pressure, and the risk of criminal prosecution for false witness has certainly made the provision of more binding oath.

53. It also notes that in 2004, the legislature intervened to reconsider the interpretation made by the Supreme Court of the combination of Articles 105, 153 and 154 of the Criminal Procedure Code and state that the obligation to provide oath and file is not applicable to persons in custody on a warrant issued by an investigating judge (see paragraph 29 above).

54. The Court also notes that it does not follow either the file or the minutes of evidence that the applicant has been informed at the beginning of his examination of the right to remain silent, to not answer the questions, or not respond to questions he wanted. It further notes that the applicant has been assisted by a lawyer twenty hours after the start of the custody period provided for in Article 63-4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (see paragraph 28 above) .dropoff window The lawyer has not been able to provide information on his right to remain silent and not to incriminate himself before his first interrogation or assist during this deposition and during those which followed as required by Article 6 of the Convention.

55. It follows that the objection raised by the Government should be dismissed and has been, in this case, with the applicant's right not to contribute to incriminating himself and to remain silent, as as guaranteed by Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 of the Convention.

 

[Vibio]

I have lost count of the number of times I have considered posts made by myself and others have rendered Machiavelli impotent, painted into a corner, scientifically, semantically, legally, judicially, morally, ethically, yet he continues to thrill the gullible crowds.

Then you are deluded. Mach has continually set you guys straight with a true knowledge of the case and the law.

 

[Samson]

Then you are deluded. Mach has continually set you guys straight with a true knowledge of the case and the law.

Machiavelli has a true knowledge of the law. For Machiavelli, faithful exposition of law trumps any requirement for that description to align with the ordinary needs of people to be regarded as truthful until proven to be liars.

 

[Kauffer]

Then you are deluded. Mach has continually set you guys straight with a true knowledge of the case and the law.

No he hasn't. He thinks callunia is an island entire of itself and that it's not possible for it to be incited in the course of a police interrogation. He thinks that what the ISC thinks is all that matters. He doesn't understand that the human rights convention and the European Court trump the ISC in it's interpretation of the procedural rights of suspects including suspects falsely termed as witnesses in order to deny them the benefit of counsel and the right of silence.

He has been unable to cite one piece of Convention case law in support of his extraordinary position. Not one piece! Can you? He needs some help.

 

[Samson]

Leila Shneps says on PMF, a website that has carte blanche to say anything without right of reply

"You are so right on this. It's no joke: it keeps happening in court, and in fact your observations are making me want to include this reasoning in our next book.

What the judge has done is to assess a probability without data, and experience has shown that those assessments cannot be based on intuition, because in such questions our intuition is wildly off. The proper data would be a list of methods for hiring a previously unknown hit man (not a Mafia-type regularly employed hit man) among people known to have done so, and the classification of those methods into types, and the number of hirings of each type that occurred.

There's no lack of cases in which people hired unknown hit men to carry out a job. I really wonder if there has ever been any proper study on the methods used. Without such a study, the judge should never have allowed herself to use the words "highly improbable".

In fact your observation here is exactly the same one that you were discussing with the Bard over whether murders over love affairs are "usual". She was saying "unusual among people having affairs" and you were saying "usual among murderers". Which just underlines the importance of specifying what those pseudo-probability words are really measuring.

Similarly, FOA has asked me many times to assess the probability that Amanda aka a nice white college girl with no priors committed murder. The idea is to calculate that probability and come up with a statement like: 0.000001 of nice white college girls commit murder, therefore there is a probability of
0.999999 that someone other than Amanda murdered Meredith.

This is the same stupid error, since if I were to replace "nice white college girl" with any other specific description whatsoever (not-nice, high-school dropout, boy etc.) and write down the probability that that sector of society committed murder, I would still get a set of tiny probabilities, given that as the Bard points out, murder is still thankfully rare. These other probabilities would not add up to 0.999999 so that conclusion would be plain wrong.

Instead, a meaningful calculation would be: among white college girls with no priors (skip the "nice") accused of murder, how many were proven guilty? I don't know the answer, but I bet it is not all that small."

Leila, you are mathematically qualified to discuss time of death as it accords with Lalli's autopsy, but you will never do so, because it would mean abandoning your belief that Amanda or Raffaele were involved.

There are many of you reading here, and commenting there.

Why not comment here?
Why not address the facts and arguments here?
Until you all do so, you are unworthy to be jurors on the fate of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

Laugh like drains at the well meaning anonymous posters here, but answer specific issues raised here before laughing over there.

 

[AmyStrange]

-

Then you are deluded. Mach has continually set you guys straight with a true knowledge of the case and the law.

-

Out of over a thousand post, s/he has only set the "probably innocent" crowd straight ten times, and all of those were in points of law, and not from true knowledge of the case, unless perception is now considered knowledge.

I'm willing to be convinced otherwise v, so show me where s/he has continually set many of the "probably innocent" crowd straight, without an equally probable perception of innocence also being introduced in rebuttal.

That should be easy, because "continually" infers many,

d

-

 

[Dan O.]

One thing that intrigues me significantly is Machiavelli's claimed level of access to many of the main actors in this strange drama, and his claims that they are willing and able to answer his questions and supply him with information.

In my opinion, if this is true, it implies either that a) Machiavelli is a public official of some importance, which would explain why these people are ready and able to share case-sensitive information with him; or b) Machiavelli is just a common-or-garden member of the public (or journalist), in which case one surely has to wonder why public officials are so (apparently) readily doling out case-sensitive information with him.
...

But you left out possibility c) Machiavelli is just an anonymous Internet poster that makes up crap to cast the police/prosecution in the best possible light.

(or did you )

 

[Dan O.]

-


-

Out of over a thousand post, s/he has only set the "probably innocent" crowd straight ten times, and all of those were in points of law, and not from true knowledge of the case, unless perception is now considered knowledge.

I'm willing to be convinced otherwise v, so show me where s/he has continually set many of the "probably innocent" crowd straight, without an equally probable perception of innocence also being introduced in rebuttal.

That should be easy, because "continually" infers many,

d

-

We don't actually know that Machavelli is correct on those points of law. He may simply be cherry picking and misinterpreting the statutes and there is no one here with sufficient depth of knowledge of Italian law to refute his points. But where Machiavelli may be correct about Italian law, he often runs head on into ECHR. As Machiavelli tries to support the Italian police, prosecution and courts by his legal arguments, he is only shifting the issue to a systemic problem in all of Italy.